Jonathan Swift by Charles Jervas

What Was Behind Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal?

Swift’s savage animosity towards the Irish Protestant elites is front and center in his biting (perhaps literally) critique of the landlord class.
An astronaut exploring another world

Space Medicine, Peasant Rebellion, and Lots of Fish

Well-researched stories from Literary Hub, Aeon, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
An illustration of a robot among city ruins

The Politics of Our AI Overlords

Fears of AI often focus on domination by algorithm-powered capitalism, but science fiction once used societies ruled by computers as analogs for communism.
Pekinese competitors arrive in the arms of their owners at the Wimbledon Dog Show, 1912

The Surprising Imperial History of the Pekingese Dog

Upper-class British women in the early 1900s participated in a craze for Pekingese dogs, signalling the role of empire in their social identities.
Clorosi by Sebastià Junyent

Green Sickness, the Disease of Virgins

In the mid-seventeenth century, John Graunt, the “father of English statistics,” claimed dozens of young women in London died of green sickness every year.
Arthur C. Clarke, 1965

Arthur C. Clarke’s Scuba Adventures and Ocean Frontiers

Clarke’s interest in oceanic exploration in the 1950s was, like his undersea fiction, often neglected by an audience focused on the race for outer space.
Copy of the signature page of the Declaration of Sentiments, 1848

“Declaration of Sentiments”: Annotated

The document that came out of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention extended the long-lived and hard-fought movement for women’s rights in the United States.
Confident students use work together on a science assignment. They are analyzing something with a microscope.

Assimilation and National Identity in the Classroom

How do we recognize and celebrate diversity and cultural belonging in the classroom?
Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland

A Massive Eruption 74,000 Years Ago Affected the Whole Planet

Archaeologists use volcanic glass to figure out how people survived.
Efka Pyramiden cigarette papers in a green packaging sleeve made in Nazi Germany, Accession Number 2004.705.5

Papering Over History

Efka—the German rolling paper company—was a Nazi regime favorite. After World War II, it was refashioned as a darling of the pot-infused counterculture.